


somebody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail

by perissologist



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: M/M, peril (TM)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-10-14 16:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10540644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perissologist/pseuds/perissologist
Summary: Dick’s mouth is dry. He doesn’t know why he’s so shocked. It isn’t like he didn’t know that Slade is a contract mercenary. A killer, to the fullest extent of the word. It’s just that—while Slade might have been the bane of his existence when he first struck out as Nightwing, recently…Dick can count more times that Slade’s helped him than hurt him. And he thought Slade was better than this.





	1. somebody's going to emergency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pentapus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> named for both the song and the west wing episode.

Dick has only ever been to Ukraine a handful of times, but he always finds it beautiful, in a stark, washed-out sort of way. There’s something about the place, something quiet and tense, that reminds him of his mother’s old Polaroids, four AM Gotham sunrises on crisp, colorless October mornings. He can appreciate it even now as he stands in front of the Marigold Bed and Breakfast, getting a thorough pat-down from the muscle men of the most notorious human trafficking ring Europe’s seen in a century. A cold, clear sky, the taste of smoke and ozone in the air, nothing but birdcalls and the rumble of cars passing in the distance to disturb the peace of the morning. He can’t help but find it charming, in its own sparse, melancholy way.

The guards nod to each other and step back, granting him access to the stairwell that runs up the side of the inn. Dick gives them a cordial nod, taking note of the various weaponry they’re carrying as he passes them. He waits until he’s a few flights up before dipping his head to the button-sized transmitter sewn inside his lapel. “Approaching target now.”

There’s a brief pause before the bud in his ear crackles to life. “I still don’t like this,” Jason’s voice growls.

Dick bites back a sigh. “I don’t know what you want me to do with that, Jason.”

“Tell Zima you have a bad case of the stomach flu and then meet me at the rendezvous point so we can get the fuck out of this country?”

“Cute.” Dick rounds the top of the stairs and finds himself on a spacious balcony wrapped around the top floor of the inn. More guards await him, parting to let him through; Dick notes two at the stairs and two more over by the door that leads from the balcony into the inn. A table with two chairs has been set up by the railing, outfitted with all the fixings of a fine European breakfast. One of the chairs is empty, and the other is occupied by a stout man with close-cut gray hair, who turns eyes the color of cold steel on Dick the moment he comes into view.

Dick puts on his best Richie Grayson grin, the one that makes Jason stare at him a little too long and that Tim claims is unnerving. “Mr. Zima, I presume?”

The man gives a sudden smile; it’s wide and toothy and puts Dick on instant high alert. “Mr. Greenfield.” His Slavic accent is thick, but his pronunciation clean and clipped. He stands and holds out a hand as Dick approaches. “A pleasure to finally meet.”

Dick takes the hand. “The pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Zima.”

Zima gestures to the empty chair. “Please, sit. We have much to discuss, Mr. Greenfield.”

“We certainly do.” Dick takes the seat. He glances up to find Zima looking at him him and tries for a confident smile—but Zima doesn’t say anything, just sits there and watches him, and Dick doesn’t realize so much as remember who this is sitting across from him. Mislav Zima: Public enemy in thirteen different countries, wanted by Interpol, the FBI, and a dozen different task forces across Europe, human slaver, and the man that Dick has devoted every spare hour of the past year of his life to bringing down. He thinks of the boxes of police reports and newspaper clippings piled against the walls of his safe room back home, the files of missing girls and discarded bodies, money trails and rigged trials and institutional corruption—all coalesced into this one moment, sitting across from a man who looks like he’d be on Bruce’s board of directors back home if not for the way he looks at another human being.

Zima flashes a sudden smile. “So, Mr. Greenfield. You have come a long way to see me. Ukraine is very far from home for you, no?”

Dick shifts in his seat. Reading people usually comes naturally to him, but Zima is difficult to gauge. He doesn’t know if the man is power-hungry or just powerful, doesn’t know if he’s sadistic or just merciless. He doesn’t know where his shots will land if he takes them—so he goes for the tried and true: An innocuous shrug of the shoulder, a sly curve of the lips, and the admission that “Well, I _do_ miss my east coast bagels. But, if I may be so bold, I believe that this trip will be worth my time, Mr. Zima.” He pauses, lets the guise of infallible and twisted build. “I’m a fan of shopping as much as any tourist, but your wares are a little more interesting than hand-made Swiss watches and designer suits, aren’t they?”

Zima takes him in, a moment too long—but then he barks out a sudden laugh, and like that his entire demeanor’s changed. _Psychopath recognizes psychopath_ , Dick thinks in grim victory. Zima leans forward and grins, like he and Dick are old friends. “Now _that_ is what I like to hear, Mr. Greenfield. You have gone through much trouble to do business with me, and that flatters me, you see. A deal always goes best when both sides are eager to partake, yes?”

Dick smiles. “I can’t imagine you’ve ever had an uneager client, Mr. Zima.”

Zima’s grin widens. “No, I suppose I have not. Forgive me my pride, Mr. Greenfield, but my _product_ is the best there is. That is why you came all this way to see me, yes?” His eyes are sharp, knowing, delighted. “Looking for something the smaller streets of Gotham cannot offer you.”

“Yes,” Dick confirms. He lets his voice hum with eagerness, letting his body lean closer. “I have many connections, Mr. Zima, and they all tell me that only you can satisfy my particular…craving.”

Zima chuckles in appreciation. “You are in luck, Mr. Greenfield. I have just received a shipment from Romania. Today, you will have the fortune of first pick. I am certain you will find something to your liking.”

Dick’s smile hurts his teeth. “You honor me, Mr. Zima.”

Zima leans back, glancing at his watch. “I am waiting for the last member of my security detail to join me, and then we may go. Do you mind a wait?”

“I’ve waited months for this moment, Mr. Zima,” Dick quips. “I can wait a little more.”

“Excellent.” Zima looks at Dick thoughtfully. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Greenfield. It has been many weeks since our first conversation, and some details have slipped my mind. It was Mr. Rawlins who referred you to my services?”

Anthony Rawlins: Son of Congressman Anastasia Rawlins, heir to his father’s Fortune 500 company, arrested three weeks ago for keeping a seventeen-year-old Albanian girl in his basement. Given up by a corrupt police captain in the seventy-sixth precinct, who was in turn convicted of ties to a high-level drug dealer in the Narrows, who served as the supplier of heroin to the local branch of Mislav Zima’s trafficking operation currently crossing off the competition in the prostitution circuit in Gotham. Gave up Mislav Zima’s name for the promise that he’d have protection if any of Zima’s men tried to shut him up. It took Dick two months to tie together the leads that led him to that drug runner. Three weeks ago, it took him almost an entire day to convince Jim Gordon to keep Rawlins’ arrest a secret so that he could set up this sting. He tips his head and gives a smile. “Anthony and I have known each other since Stanford Law. He speaks very highly of doing business with you, Mr. Zima.”

“Mr. Rawlins is one of my best clients,” Zima says. “I must thank him, later, for referring you to me.”

Before Dick can respond with some smarmy line about _referrals being the foundation of any good business_ , one of the guards steps forward. Zima tilts his head as a gesture of permission for the man to lean in and murmur something in his ear. He nods, barely sparing the guard a glance. “Send him up,” he tells the guard in Ukrainian he thinks Dick doesn’t understand, and the guard nods, turning to descend the same stairs Dick came up.

“The last member of our party is arriving; we can leave soon. In the meantime, you must try this coffee.” Zima picks up an elegant enamel coffeepot and pours a stream of thick, dark liquid into a cup. He pushes it across the table. “I had it flown in from Columbia.”

Dick picks up the cup and takes a sip. He hates that it tastes like Alfred’s favorite brew. “It’s exquisite,” he remarks.

Zima smiles and leans back in his seat, and Dick takes the lull in the conversation to turn his gaze out over the balcony. The inn is in perfect view of Ukraine’s Carpathian mountain range, its hazy blue-gray crags the only shape that breaks the bleak azure sky. The narrow, hilly streets below are unusually quiet for a Saturday morning, but Dick chalks it up to the fact that the locals are probably smart enough to know that this is trafficker territory.

A sigh sounds in his ear. “I hate this,” Jason repeats, for probably the four millionth time since Dick left Gotham for Ukraine.

Dick rolls his eyes behind his designer sunglasses and takes another sip of coffee. He begins to hum, idly, over the lip of his cup. _I Want to Hold Your Hand._

“Don’t tell me everything’s fine,” Jason snaps. “You’re alone, bare-faced, and barely armed in the hotseat of the worst human rights violation Europe’s seen since the Soviet Union. Fuck, Dick, it was a bad idea to go in without backup.”

 _I think you’ll understand_ , Dick hums. He watches a hawk circle lazily above the empty street. _I want to hold your hand._

“ _Stop_ humming, now is not the time to be using the all clear signal—”

“Mr. Greenfield.” Dick turns to see Zima gesturing over the newcomer who has just appeared on the balcony. “Please meet the newest member of my team and our escort for today, Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson, say hello to my friend, Mr. Greenfield.”

Their eyes meet, and for a moment it’s almost comical. Slade is in his armor—part of his contract, most likely, Dick surmises, in the faint part of his brain that isn’t spluttering idiotically. Signature orange chest plate, shoulder pads, and shin guards, dark gray kevlar over his abdomen and thighs, holsters strapped to his hips, military-grade boots. Dick is in a purposefully loose-fitting Armani suit and the Ray Bans Tim bought him for his twenty-fourth birthday, and the only weapon he carries is the pen-sized single-discharge taser strapped to the inside of his calf. He thinks he might throw up.

Slade, ever the professional, is the first to speak. “A pleasure.”

Dick’s mouth is dry. He doesn’t know why he’s so shocked. It isn’t like he didn’t _know_ that Slade is a contract mercenary. A killer, to the fullest extent of the word. This isn’t even the first time he’s clashed with Slade out-of-uniform. It’s just that—while Slade might have been the bane of his existence when he first struck out as Nightwing, recently…Dick can count more times that Slade’s helped him than hurt him. And he still has the files and files of girls Zima murdered in in the room next to the one he sleeps in back home.

Dick’s training must kick in eventually, because he manages to conjure up a thin-lipped smile. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr.—sorry, what was it again?”

“Wilson,” Slade says. His single eye glitters in the cold morning sun. “Slade Wilson.”

“Mr. Wilson is the best in his field,” Zima assures Dick. “We will worry for nothing while we are with him.” He gestures to one of the guards. “Petyr, tell Krono to bring the car around.”

Petyr steps forward. “Sergei wishes to speak with you, sir.”

Zima’s lips thin, but he flashes Dick an apologetic look. “Forgive me, Mr. Greenfield, but this will  just be a moment.”

Dick watches as his host excuses himself into the inn and feels the familiar sinking weight of a mission that’s about to go horribly wrong. Slade is standing less than a foot away from him by the side of the tble, and Dick can’t look at him, can’t think about what he’s doing here, in Ukraine, in Dick’s mission, at the beck and call of a human slaver. He knows Slade is looking at him, can feel the weight of Slade’s gaze like he always can, and he can’t _think_ , fuck, what is he going to do now? _The mission—focus, Dick, focus on the mission._ Dick knows his skills, and he knows he can’t take on Zima, his guards, and fucking Deathstroke by himself, in a suit that’s made of gray silk instead of kevlar weave. But he pulls out now, and he knows he won’t ever get within spitting distance of Zima ever again. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Slade shifts, and Dick is instantly on high alert—but he’s only moving around to position himself behind Dick’s chair, arms rising to cross over his chest. To Zima’s men by the wall, it looks like he’s moving into standard sentry position, covering Dick’s back—but he stands a little too close, at just the right distance to be able to speak to Dick without the guards overhearing. Dick swallows and tilts his body away from the guards, back towards the mountains and the open sky.

Behind him, Slade clears his throat. “Grayson,” he rumbles.

Dick looks out over the horizon. “Slade.”

There’s an abrupt crackling over the comm in Dick’s ear, like someone has just grabbed the microphone. “Did you fucking just say _Slade?_ ”

Dick ignores it, instead focusing his attention on keeping his voice steady as he studies the curves of the Carpathian. “I didn’t think this was your scene.”

Slade snorts. “Funny. I was just about to say the same to you.”

Dick swallows. He lifts his coffee cup again and licks at dry lips. “Are you going to blow my cover?”

There’s a long pause, in which Dick’s unoccupied hand slips underneath the table and feels for the shape of his taser. But, to Dick’s surprise, Slade just exhales. “Honestly, Grayson, I don’t think I’m going to need to.”

Dick tenses. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Grayson, that you’re in over your head,” Slade growls. Dick supposes he should find it impressive that the man can sound so threatening without even moving his mouth enough for anyone outside their conversation to detect he’s speaking. “You have no idea what Zima is capable of.”

Dick’s eyes dart towards the door, but Zima is still out of sight. “I can handle myself.”

“This isn’t a matter of ‘handling,’ Grayson, it’s a matter of _numbers_. Don’t tell me—you’re here by yourself, aren’t you?”

Dick shifts in his seat. “It was the only way I could arrange a face-to-face with him. You think he doesn’t have people watching the streets? He’d know if I came with someone.”

Slade snorts. “Come on, Grayson, you can do better.”

Dick’s grip tightens around the coffee cup. “And what about you?”

“What about me, little bird?”

Dick _hates_ that nickname. “What are you doing here, working for someone like Zima?” It takes all of his willpower to not let his voice rise. “I know you’re technically a _villain_ , Slade, but somehow I thought you were better than this.”

Slade makes a noise halfway between a hum and a growl. “I don’t think you know what I’m better than, Grayson.”

And Dick wants to say something to _that_ , but— The hand holding the coffee Zima poured him is beginning to shake. He looks down, confused. His wrists feel strangely weak, and his grip has turned lax and clammy. He blinks, once, twice, and—no, he’s not imagining it. His vision is beginning to blur.

Immediately, Dick’s eyes dart to the fragrant liquid at the bottom of his cup. _Fuck._ He thought the bitter taste was just how strong the coffee was brewed, but—

Dick looks back over the mountains and feels his eyes begin to drift shut behind his Ray Bans. He begins to hum, a different tune this time. _Eleanor Rigby, died in the church and was buried along with her name…_

“Are you—fuck,” Jason hisses. There’s the clatter of a body scrambling, guns and tools and equipment being gathered up in a rush. “Shit. I’m coming, okay? Just—hold on. I’m coming.”

The door opens, and Zima appears. Dick turns and watches as he strides across the balcony and stands there by the table, hands loose in his pockets, watching Dick like a lion watches a crippled gazelle. Dick swallows, thick, and lets the coffee cup slide from now nerveless fingers to shatter on the asphalt.

“How are you feeling, Mr Greenfield?” Zima says, with a small, strange smile. The veneer of friendliness, of business camaraderie is gone. His eyes are cold.

“What did you do to me?” Dick rasps. Behind him, he hears the scrape of Slade’s heels as he shifts, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to focus. Black spots are beginning to burst across his vision, and everything sounds like it’s coming to him from down a long tunnel.

Zima tilts his head. “Did you really think I would not know of Mr. Rawlins’ arrest, Mr. Greenfield? I know everything—most of all the situations my clients are involved in that might compromise me and the business I do.” He watches Dick with careful keenness. “I had my suspicions about you, Mr. Greenfield, but I could not confirm any of them until you cited Anthony Rawlins to me. It was then that I knew you were a—what do they call it in America?” He smiles, suddenly. “A narc.”

Dick tries to breathe, to think his way out, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to focus. _The taser_ , the thought stumbles, blurred, across his mind. _They’ll…find it. But what about—_

“To be honest, I still am not sure of what you are,” Zima muses. “Interpol, most likely. Or perhaps the FBI, if you truly are an American?” The corner of his mouth twitches upward, and he signals for the guards behind him. “I suppose it does not matter. We will find out soon enough, will we not, Mr. Greenfield?”

 _Shit,_ Dick thinks, before his body gives up and his eyes roll into the back of his head. _I hate it when Jason’s right._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many Moons Ago, the lovely and iridescently talented pentapoda (at pentapoda.tumblr.com) drew me the most beautiful prompt i've ever laid eyes on for her dick grayson-centric art/fic exchange. then i promptly proceeded to bungle her trust by trying to write a worthy fic, failing, scrapping it, starting over, and taking a goddamn long ass time to finally put something out because i, as i am wont to do, severely overestimated my ability to carry out a plot in a succinct manner. thus, i present to you: part i of hopefully only ii of a story crafted entirely to ft. dick & slade & peril. enjoy ?


	2. somebody's going to jail

Dick wakes up aching. His mouth is gritty, his eyes sting, and he’s got a migraine that pounds like it’s trying to send him a message in Morse code— _you’re an idiot_ , probably. It’s dark and damp wherever he is, and the distinct smell of rusted iron and stale water clogs his nostrils. He tries not to groan at the cliche. “What, do all criminals have the same interior designer or something?” he mutters himself, then immediately winces when speaking makes everything from his chest up feel ten times worse. _Alright, witty commentary is off the table._ Noted.

He rolls along the cold, grimy floor until he finds a wall to prop himself up against, then does a quick breathing exercise so he doesn’t pass out from the pain in his side before taking stock of the situation. Judging from the wooziness and nausea that makes it hard for him to think beyond a few sentences at a time, either the drugs Zima slipped him were heavy duty, or he has a concussion; the deep and persistent throbbing in his torso tells him he’s probably got a couple of cracked ribs as well. His wrists and ankles are bound together in rusting iron shackles, but the worst injury he can find on himself is a possibly broken left pinky, which is swelling up in rather ugly shades of purple in the single dim shaft of light coming through the grate in his cell door. Oh, and he’s in a cell—plain, undecorated gray concrete, with exposed piping in the corner dripping metallic-smelling water onto the floor. Pretty standard stuff.

Dick sighs. It’s not the best scenario he’s ever woken up to, but it’s definitely not the worst. Most of his bones are still intact—the important ones, anyway—and his thoughts are more or less clear, if a little slow. He brings his shackled hands up to his ear. No earpiece. _Shit. Jason’s going to be so mad._

He hears footsteps echoing outside of his cell door, accompanied by the low murmur of voices. On instinct, he slumps over onto the floor and plays dead. He hears the grate in his cell door slide open; there’s a pause, then someone says, in Ukrainian, “He’s still out.”

A scoff. “Pathetic,” another man responds. Zima. “This is what counts as law enforcement these days? They must be getting desperate.”

“Still, boss,” the first man says. “He found you.”

A short, irritated sigh. “Fine. Move everything to the Kazakhstan base tonight.”

“The safe, too?”

“Yes. Burn the compound when you’re done.”

“What about the fed?”

A dark chuckle. “We’ll ship him out to the Moldova location. Let the clients have some fun with him before we bury him. It’d be a shame to waste a pretty face like that, wouldn’t it?”

Then the jangle of a key in the lock, the scrape of the door opening, and the mismatched footsteps of at least four men crossing the cell. Dick braces himself just in time for one of the men to grab him by the shoulder and throw him bodily onto his back.

“Rise and shine, princess,” the thug says in thickly accented English, leaning over Dick with an ugly smile.

Dick makes a show of groaning and letting his eyes flutter open. Zima comes forward and gives Dick a much colder and sharper smile. “Hello again, Mr. Greenfield. How was your sleep?”

Dick coughs past bone-dry lungs. “Not great,” he rasps out. “Your housekeeping services could use some work.”

Zima’s smile turns thin. “Perhaps we could make you more comfortable if you were to tell us what we want to know.”

Dick gingerly tugs his shoulder out of the thug’s grip and pulls himself back up against the wall, making sure to exaggerate every wince of pain. Zima seems to still think Dick is some green-blooded federal agent in over his head, and he isn’t in any rush to disabuse his captor of that notion. Although, he somehow doubts that he’s at much risk of being exposed as “bird-themed vigilante superhero with ties to bat-themed vigilante superhero,” anyway. “Well, that depends. What would you like to know, Mr. Zima?”

“Who sent you?” Zima asks, flat. “And what do they know?”

“Ah.” Dick coughs again, only half faking it. “Sorry, Mr. Zima, but that information’s private. Could I interest you in some trivia instead? You ever heard of the show _Friends_?”

Zima’s smile fades into a tight curl of his lips. “No matter, Mr. Greenfield,” he says, leaning back. “I’m sure you will be feeling more talkative after spending some time with my new employee.” He gestures to his men, and they withdraw to the cell door. “I hear that making people honest is his specialty.”

Zima and his posse file out the door, with one last nasty look thrown over Zima’s shoulder for emphasis. A moment later, the heavy thud of armored boots fills the cell, followed by the clang of the door swinging shut again. When Dick looks up, Slade is standing before him, gazing down on him with a pitying expression on his one-eyed face.

“Grayson,” he rumbles. “You’re just getting worse and worse at this, aren’t you?”

Dick stifles a groan. “Don’t tell me,” he says. “They sent you in to interrogate me. A little test for mercenary’s first day, huh?”

Slade crouches down so that he and Dick are face to face. He reaches out a gloved hand and takes Dick’s chin almost gently in his fingers. “You might consider giving the person currently holding your life in his hands a little less tongue, Grayson.”

Dick’s left eye is somewhat swollen, but he thinks the glare he fixes on Slade probably does the job anyway. “I thought you liked my tongue, Slade.”

Slade arches a single silver eyebrow, and Dick thinks he sees his lips twitch. Then he drops his fingers and reaches into his belt to pull out a nondescript flesh-colored nodule. “I believe this belongs to you.”

His earpiece. “You know you don’t have to steal my things, Slade. I’m sure Zima will pay you well enough that you can buy some toys of your own.”

“I didn’t take it from you, Grayson,” Slade says. “Zima did, when he searched you after you passed out. I’m just the one who took it from him.”

Dick feels a twinge of hope in his chest. “And what do you plan to do with it?”

Slade shrugs. “Return it to him, probably. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man to misplace his belongings.” He holds it out. “But first I thought you might like to give your friend a ring. In case there’s anything you want him to know.”

Dick stares at him for a moment. Slade’s expression is impassive, and it isn’t hard to remember that this is the man who threatened the lives of his friends and teammates when he was a teenager, who has killed countless people, innocent and otherwise, throughout his bloody and unhappy career. But Dick also knows that there’s been many, many tight binds in his past that he likely would have never survived if Slade hadn’t been here. He takes the earpiece and slips it into his ear. “Jason?”

“ _Dick_.” A long string of colorful curses follows his name, but Dick can hear the relief leaking through. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ. You’re a shitbag, you know that? A real shitbag.”

Dick smiles. “Where are you?”

“In the fucking—opium den across the street from the Marigold. I fucking hate this neighborhood, you know that?”

“It’s a shitty neighborhood,” Dick agrees. “I don’t think I’m at the Marigold anymore.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Jason exhales. “I’m pretty sure the building’s empty. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Dick says. “I’m in some sort of holding cell. No windows, so I can’t tell if I’m underground or above.”

“I’m not getting a signal on your tracker.”

“Yeah, Zima probably lifted that off me during his search.”

“Don’t worry,” Jason says. “I’ll find you.”

Dick clears his throat. He just knows that Jason is going to hate what he says next. “Actually…I need you to do something else for me.”

Jason’s snort is more angry than amused. “What? You’re locked up somewhere by a fucking human trafficker and you want me to run errands for you?”

“Zima is having his men move their base of operations to Kazakhstan tonight,” Dick says. “That means his weapons, tech, money, records—it’s all going to be vulnerable. I need you to contact Agent Virginia Li at the FBI headquarters in New York and Agent Elodie Yusef at German Interpol and help them seize Zima’s caravan—he won’t fly, airspace over the Kazakhstan border is too heavily monitored to risk it. Tell them you’re my CI, they’ll know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” Jason says, flat. “Absolutely not.”

“Jason.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you’re being held by a sex slaver,” Jason spits. “We need to get you out of there as soon as possible. Everything else can wait.”

“This can’t,” Dick snaps. “Jason, everything that Li and Yusef need to put Zima and his lieutenants away for good is going to be in that caravan. Once it crosses the Kazakh border, all bets are off; it’ll take another five years to find their base again. Everyone and everywhere Zima’s ever kidnapped, bought, and sold will be in those records. There are people whose lives depend on this.”

There’s a long, angry pause. Dick can practically see Jason grinding his jaw on the other end of the line. “And what about you? What about your life?”

“I’ll be fine,” Dick says. His eyes flicker to Slade, watching him without a trace of emotion on his scarred face. “I’ll find a way out.”

Another long pause. “Is Slade still there?”

“Yeah,” Dick says. “I don’t know if he’ll help, but…he won’t hurt.”

Jason swallows. “Will you be able to communicate?”

Dick hesitates. “No. I have the earpiece for now, but…I don’t think I’ll be able to hang on to it.”

Jason curses under his breath. Then, quieter, almost soft: “If you die on me, Grayson, I’m going to throw you in the Lazarus Pit just so I can kill you myself, got it?”

Dick smiles. He and Jason have only been working together for a year now—only stopped trying to kill each other for three—and it’s been…good. Really good. Dick loves his friends and his family more than his own life, but Jason’s different from the rest of them in the best possible way. Unlike most everyone else in his life, Jason doesn’t expect anything more from Dick than what he gets, doesn’t have any preconceived notions of him that are exhausting to live up to. Dick doesn’t know what they are yet—doesn’t know if they’re anything at all—but he knows he wants to find out. He just has to survive the night.

“You say the sweetest things, Todd,” Dick says. “Be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jason says, gruff. “Just…get yourself out of there, alright?”

“Will do.”

Dick can hear how reluctant Jason is to leave him in the roughness of his voice. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” Dick says. “You will.”

It hurts to take the earpiece out and hand it over to Slade, but Dick does it anyway. He watches as Slade wordlessly drops it back into the compartment in his belt. “What now?”

“Now,” Slade says, and suddenly the front of Dick’s shirt is in Slade’s fist, and he’s being dragged to the center of the room. “I make it look like I did the job Zima sent me in here to do.”

Slade leans in, and Dick sees something flicker across the steel gray of his eye. “Zima will move you to Moldova in the armored trucks he uses to transport most of his shipments. Exterior lock cylinders and rotary latches, with slam locks to prevent openings from the inside. Door ajar security system wired into the control board underneath the floor panel. Armored on four sides with galvanized steel.” He meets Dick’s gaze, intent. “You got that?”

Dick looks at Slade and wants, desperately, to say something—something like _Thank you_ or _Why are you doing this?_ or _Come with me._ Instead, he just nods and braces himself for what’s coming next.

“Do me a favor and make this sound good, kid,” Slade says. The punch he delivers to Dick’s gut knocks the breath from his lungs, but it doesn’t strike his ribs. Dick groans for the sake of anyone listening and begins to plan his next move.

~*~

They come for Dick after a few hours of letting him stew in the dark, nursing the split lip and black eye Slade gave him to make his “interrogation” convincing. They drop a black bag over his head and pull him to his feet, then drag him out the door and down several corridors, which is not the best time for Dick, considering his ankles are still shackled together. Then the concrete floor underneath his feet gives way to uneven dirt, and soon enough they’ve stopped and Dick is listening to one of the men unlocking the back of what he presumes is the armored truck.

Dick runs through his next moves in his head. There’s a slender long-hook lockpick sewn into the hem of his pant leg, as a precaution for situations exactly like this one. Trying to escape in the compound would’ve been too risky, with no way to know how many men he’d have to face, but even the roomiest of armored trucks can only fit so many people. The shackles on his hands and feet are heavy and rusty, but the lockpick is enforced titanium and has seen much worse. He’ll wait until they’re deep in the Ukrainian foothills before getting rid of the shackles, cutting the wires to the electronic locking system underneath the floor panel, and leaving the truck behind, hopefully all without the guards becoming any the wiser.

He hears the doors swing open, and then he’s shoved through—and into a mass of bodies that startles him into a flinch. The doors slam shut again behind him, and he’s left in the dark with the sounds of breathing filling the space. He swallows. “Hello?”

There’s the sound of whispering; then the bag is pulled from his head, and he finds himself staring into the gaunt and frightened faces of at least fifteen young women, crammed into the back of the armored truck so tightly there’s barely room to stand.

Dick’s heart drops into his stomach. _Oh, no._

The girl holding the bag looks at Dick with terrified eyes. “Are you one of them?” she asks, in whispered Romanian.

Dick’s Romanian is excellent; his father was born in Romania, and he grew up speaking the language mixed in with his Romani. “No,” he says, in as soft a voice as he can muster. “No, I’m police. I’m here to help you.”

Another girl, with short dark hair and an angry twist to her mouth, looks at Dick with something like scorn. “You’re tied up,” she points out, blunt. “And locked up in here with the rest of us.”

“I can get out of these,” Dick says, holding up the shackles. “I can get out of this truck, too. I can get all of us out. As soon as we’re far enough away from the compound, I get us out and we can run. The woods will cover us.”

“And then what?” the dark-haired girl asks. “Do you have backup to pick us up?”

Dick hesitates. “No. But we can find a town. If I can get to a radio, I can call for people to come for us.”

“Most of these girls haven’t had water for days,” the girl says, gesturing angrily. “I can’t remember the last time they fed us. We wouldn’t make it more than a mile in the woods. They’d find us within the hour. And then they’d hurt us.”

“They’ll hurt you if you stay in this truck, too,” Dick says.

“No,” the first girl says, with the sad eyes. “They like to keep us neat for the—for the clients. They only hit us if we’ve done something wrong.”

Dick’s fists curl tight. Anger has begun to burn in his stomach, dark and sooty and bitter as poison. “We’ll get out,” he promises them, jaw clenched. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

The dark-haired girl meets his gaze, head on. She reminds him of Jason, in the way she looks at him like a challenge. “I’ll hold you to that, _băiete_ ,” she says, like he isn’t at least five years older than her.

They spend what feels like hours riding in the dark over bumpy and uneven roads, packed so close together there’s no room to sit. Dick decides to leave the shackles on: He’s not going anywhere without these girls, and he can’t imagine the guards will be pleased if they unlock the doors and find that he’s wriggled his way out of their toys. At last, the truck grinds to a halt, and the doors unlock and fall open. The guards usher everyone out, corralling them like lambs to the slaughter to a mansion on an estate that might’ve been idyllic if it hadn’t been for the gangs of men with AK47s roaming about.

It’s purposefully dark inside the house, the air filled with smoke and the smell of sweat and cigarettes. As soon as they’re through the door, two of the guards grab Dick and begin dragging him away from the others, into the east wing of the house.

“No—wait—” Dick does his best to yank himself free, but the guards’ grips are tight. “Where are you taking me?”

One of them leers at him, in true Evil Thug fashion. “Where do you think, prettyboy?”

“Why aren’t I going with the others?” Dick snaps.

“Men and women go in separate wings,” the other guard grunts. “Clients like it that way.”

Dick snarls and fights against the guards’ hold, partly just to put on a show, partly because he’s really starting to miss the weight of his good old electrified escrima sticks right about now. They drag him up three flights of stairs and down a dimly lit corridor before throwing him into a room with no windows, a single chair, and a bed that looks like it could give him tetanus. They shove him down into the chair and tie him in place with a series of cable ropes, and before Dick can react, one of them is sinking a syringe full of whiskey-colored liquid into his wrist.

Dick jerks, and the needle jumps from his forearm and clatters onto the floor. “Fucker!” the guard hisses, stooping to pick it back up again. “This shit is expensive.”

Dick looks down at the specks of blood and amber liquid dotting the floor and feels his stomach turn. “What did you give me?” he asks, but he already knows: He can feel it starting to creep over him, the sensation like a tide washing over his mind and scattering his thoughts out to sea.

“The good stuff,” the leery guard says, with a bare of his yellow teeth. “Take a moment to enjoy it, prettyboy. You start working for us soon.”

They’re kind enough to unlock his shackles before they leave, or maybe they just want to get rid of the ugliest evidence of trafficking before the clients come through the door. As soon as the men are out of the room, Dick starts picking at the knots tying him down, but the guard was right: It is the good stuff. Heavy and sweet and thick, flooding through his veins like molten lava, pressing up behind his eyes and his teeth and the tips of his fingers. He gets one knot loose but fumbles another, and by now it feels like there’s a disconnect between his thoughts and his movements, like his mind is racing ten steps ahead of his body. His breath feels loud and enormous in his lungs, and his skin is hot, feverish—but he can’t get lost in it, he can’t, he can’t. He has work to do. He forces himself to focus on the bindings. He’s been freeing himself from shoddy tie-up jobs since he was nine, since toddlerhood if you count the tricks the escape artists showed him in the circus. He can do this in his sleep, and he can do it high. He just has to focus.

He doesn’t know how long it takes him to pry apart all the knots and stumble to his feet, but he knows it’s too long, knows Bruce would’ve been shaking his head over his timer by now if this was a training simulation down in the Cave. The room spins around him when he stands, and shit, this stuff is strong—and it’s then that a man with immaculately groomed salt-and-pepper hair and eyes as black as coal comes through the door, wearing a gray silk suit like all of the other vile subhumans Zima associates with.

“I heard we got some new stock,” he says, with a nasty grin. “I thought I might break it in.”

Dick doesn’t kill, and most of the time he tries not to permanently maim—but he’s too high to give a fuck when he grabs one of the cable ropes, slings it around the back of the man’s neck, and uses it to slam him face-first into the bottom rail of the bed frame. The man bounces off the iron railing and falls to the floor in a bloodied mess, groaning incoherently, and Dick doesn’t wait to see if he’ll pass out before stumbling his way out of the room and down the hall.

The house is just a house, but in Dick’s addled state, it seems like an impenetrable compound, full of twisting corridors and monsters that leap out of the dark. Dick finds the stairs and trips down them, taking out the two guards on the second floor by pushing one of them into the other and watching as they bounce and tumble down the steps. Then he’s fumbling his way across the massive foyer with its crystal chandelier and elegant stairways and dragging himself up the much narrower servants’ flights on the other side of the house to the fourth floor of the west wing.

The first door Dick busts down opens to an empty room, but the second reveals the dark-haired girl from the armored truck, handcuffed to a bed even dingier than the one in Dick’s room and glaring at the entrance with red-rimmed eyes. The glare falters when she realizes it’s Dick slumped in the doorframe. “ _Băiete_?”

Dick reaches down and pulls the lockpick from its hiding place in the hem of his pants. “Can you—do you know how to use this?”

The girl looks at the pick and nods, quickly. He tosses it to her and takes a moment to brace himself so that the walls stop switching around him. “Hurry,” he says.

Within minutes the girl is free and at his side, just in time to stumble under his weight as he slides into her. “Shit,” she murmurs, wedging her shoulder under his to prop him upright as best she can. “They shot you up.”

“Come on,” he pants. “Let’s go find your friends.”

They find and free the other girls on the floor, and then all sixteen of them, fifteen kidnapped girls and a bird-themed vigilante high on opioids, creep their way back to the foyer and to the front door. They almost make it, too—the door is already open when Dick hears shouting behind him, and turns to see ten-plus men with assault rifles screaming in Ukrainian and streaming down the double staircases.

The girls stare at the men with sick expressions of dread. Dick swallows past the nausea in his throat and pushes them toward the door. “Go,” he says. “The car—the truck, the one we came in, it should still be parked outside. Get the—use the pick to start it. Drive as fast as you can.”

“What about you?” one of the girls blurts, a tiny slip of a thing that can’t be older than fifteen.

“I’ll be fine,” Dick hisses. “Go.”

In another scenario, Dick thinks the dark-haired girl might’ve fought to stay, or fought for him to come with them—but she’s smart and tough and knows that she won’t save anybody’s life that way. “Thank you,” she murmurs, eyes bright in her thin face, and then they’re fleeing across the mansion’s front yard to the armored truck still in the driveway.

Dick turns just in time to throw a punch into the throat of the first guard that lunges at him. He goes down, but four more take his place. Dick takes them out, too, with a roundhouse to the face, a jab to the temple, and two simultaneous kicks to the chest, respectively, but as soon as he lands on his feet again he sways and has to swallow back a sudden rush of bile. The effort of not throwing up distracts him enough for the next guy to punch him across the cheek, which then makes it somewhat difficult to dodge the forceful knee that his friend sends into his gut, and then he’s on his knees with his forearms braced above his head, just waiting for the strike that knocks him out.

But it doesn’t come. In the next second, a dozen shots crack the air, one after the other. The most that any of the guards get off in return is a desperate spray of bullets as they fall to the floor, clean round entry wounds in the middle of their foreheads. Their blood spills in wide pools on the marble and covers Dick’s face and clothes in splatters of red.

Dick sways on his knees and falls into a solid chest, covered in kevlar. Shapes and colors blur before his eyes. “Slade?”

“Come on, kid.” Strong arms slip underneath his back and legs and heft him up. Then the cool night wind is on his face. “Let’s get you out of here.”

For the next half-hour, Dick slips in and out, lost in the heat of the drugs burning through his veins. But, sooner than he would’ve expected, the haze fades enough for him to blink his vision into focus. He’s in the forest, propped up against a tree trunk, and Slade is crouching before him, watching him with his critical gray gaze.

“Slade?” Dick’s mouth feels like the desert. “What are you doing here?”

Slade snorts. “Saving your ass as usual, it seems.” He holds up a small white nasal spray. “Feeling better?”

Dick squints at the label. _Naloxone hydrochloride._ “Did you Narcan me?”

“You stopped breathing for a second there,” Slade says, mouth in a grim line. “You’re lucky I carry this with me.”

Dick swallows and tries to sit upright, wincing when the movement calls attention to the scrapes, bruises, and now definitely broken ribs he’s accumulated in the past few hours. “Why do you carry that with you?”

“Heroin overdoses are not as unusual in my line of work as you might think, Grayson.”

Dick snorts. “Well. I guess I should be grateful for that.” He lifts a hand to his aching head. God, it feels like he stopped breathing. “Why were you at the house?”

Slade gives him an unimpressed look. “Once I heard that you were being transported with the Romania shipment, I figured that you might be stupid enough to not save yourself until you could save all of them.”

“Women. The Romanian women,” Dick says.

Slade lifts an eyebrow. “You think I don’t know that?”

Dick opens his mouth, then deflates. “Sorry.” He looks at Slade, crouching there in the moonlight with a careful expression on his usually inscrutable face, and feels some resistance inside him crumble. “You came for me?”

Slade’s mouth quirks. “Don’t flatter yourself, kid. You’re more useful to me as an enemy than those men back there will ever be as an ally.”

Dick laughs, soft. “How could I not be flattered by that?”

Slade’s smirk fades. “You alright now?”

“Yeah,” Dick says. “I think so.”

He reaches out and takes Dick’s arm gently in his hand, smoothing his fingers over the track mark in Dick’s wrist. “Did they hurt you?”

Dick swallows. He forgets, when he thinks he’s standing on the opposite site of the battlefield as him, how intense Slade can be, how intimate it feels to be close to him when his shields are down. “No,” he replies, barely above a whisper. “No, I’m okay.”

They look at each other for a moment, Slade’s fingers on Dick’s wrist and Dick’s breath stuck in his throat. He wants to say something, do something—thank him, for the second time that day—apologize, for the fact that he definitely won’t get paid now, even though it was a job that sorely deserved to be botched—lean forward, maybe, and bask in Slade’s heat up close, the hard and wanting grip of his hands, taste those sharp words for himself—

Slade reaches into his belt and pulls out—not Dick’s earpiece, but a proper communicator, military-grade with real range and connectivity. “I have your partner on the line,” he says. His voice is quiet but rough around the edges. “You want to talk to him?”

Dick blinks once, then twice. “You called Jason?”

Slade hands him the comm, and Dick holds it up to his ear. It’s a repeat of the scene from less than twelve hours ago, in a dank cell in Zima’s compound rather than a secluded corner of the forest. “Jay?”

“Dickie.” Jason’s voice is warm and heavy with relief. “Thank god. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Dick says. “A little slow on my feet, but I’ll live. You?”

“Fine. I called Li and Yusef. They got their joint task force out to Russia in, like, four hours. You know, you could’ve told me there were people who had a joint task force for this continent-wide human trafficking thing.”

“Sorry,” Dick grins. “Did they—?”

“Yeah. Intercepted their caravan on the exact trail you predicted they use in your case file. Seized a hundred pounds of weapons, all of their records, and half a million in cold cash. Arrested Zima and four of his top lieutenants on the spot. I thought Yusef was going to kiss me.”

Dick slumps against the tree as the brightness of elation fills him to the brim. “I think you should’ve let her.”

“I was flattered, but she’s not really my type,” Jason says, a little too light. “Anyway, the task force is going through the records now and sending out teams to the containment facilities, auction houses, and brothels where they’re keeping the girls. Gordon’s already in the loop, too. His men are cleaning up the Gotham branch as we speak.”

“God.” Dick exhales. “Thank you, Jay.”

“Don’t thank me; you did most of the work.” Jason pauses. “I’m just—really fucking glad you’re okay.”

Dick smiles. “You too.”

Jason hesitates. “And Slade—?”

“He’s still here.” Dick glances at him. “He helped get me out. I wouldn’t have made it out of there alive without him.”

“Well.” Jason coughs. “Maybe I won’t unload a clip into him the next time I see him, then.”

Dick laughs. “Where are you now?”

“Back in Chernivsti, at our jet. Li gave me a ride. I was gonna come find you.”

Dick looks to Slade, who gives him a tilt of his head. “Stay there; we’ll come to you.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“See you soon.”

Dick hands the comm back to Slade. “Take me home?” he asks.

Slade just chuckles and shakes his head, like he can’t quite believe he’s found himself at the beck and call of the idealistic pain-in-the-ass kid he spent most of his time trying to kill not eight years ago. “Sure, kid,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after 84 years of being The Worst(TM), i have somehow finally found the burst of inspiration to finish this prompt. thank you to those of you who have read, reviewed, and recommended this fic to your friends & followers, and also, I'm Sorry
> 
> "epilogue" to come!


	3. postscript

There are many things that happen before Dick gets to go home. Slade brings him on his all-terrain motorcycle across the Moldova-Ukraine border back to Chernivsti, where Dick and Jason set up their operation before Dick went to meet Zima. When Jason sees Dick, he immediately crushes him in a hug so tight Dick groans in protest on behalf of his ribs. He holds him there just long enough for Dick to get suspicious, and he glances up to find Jason giving Slade a glare that would make Bruce proud. Slade takes his leave, with little more than a nod and a smirk in Dick’s direction, and then they’re on the flight home to Gotham, Jason tending to Dick’s sorry ribs and withdrawal symptoms in the med bay while the jet takes them across the Atlantic on autopilot. 

As soon as Dick sleeps off the heroin, he calls Agent Li and gets to listen to her talk about beginning the long and arduous process of rooting out and shutting down the brothels and auction houses in Zima’s empire all over Europe. She tells him about the armored truck full of girls Yusef and her men found in the Moldovan forest and brought to the nearest hospital, and about the dark-haired girl who seemed to be their leader, who had a message she wanted delivered to the _băiat_. “She wanted me to thank you for keeping your promise,” Li says, sounding amused. “Do I want to know what that’s about?”

Dick grins as he adjusts the IV in his arm. “Later,” he says. “Tell me about the charges you’re pressing against Zima.”

Bruce, Tim, and Barbara all call to reprimand him on almost getting himself sold into sex slavery, but at the end of Bruce’s call there’s a gruff, “Well done,” which Dick will take for the victory it is (even if he knows Bruce would be singing a much different tune if he knew about Slade’s involvement). Jason crashes at Dick’s place for a few days to hide his uniform (and his backup uniform) so he can’t go on patrol until his ribs heal, and to make sure he eats something beside takeout and Crocky Crunch. A few days turns into a week, and a week turns into a month, until one Sunday morning Dick is rewarding himself to a bowl of cereal on the couch after his first night back on patrol, and he glances over to Jason sitting beside him. Before he can think twice, he’s leaning over and pressing their lips together.

Jason is warm, and solid, and he responds instantly, slipping his hands around Dick’s waist to tug him closer. When they part, Jason strokes his thumb along Dick’s jaw and smiles, the softest that Dick’s ever seen him; and Dick doesn’t say anything at all, just buries his face in Jason’s neck and lets the contentment wash over him.

That afternoon, Jason is making them dinner in the kitchen while Dick watches _Moana_ for the fourth time when Dick’s phone rings, the one he uses for all of his “nighttime” business. He doesn’t recognize the number, so he’s a little hesitant when he answers. “Hello?”

“Little bird.” Slade’s voice is a familiar rasp in Dick’s ear. “Missed me?”

Dick relaxes against the back of the couch. “Will it make me sound needy if I say yes?”

Slade makes an amused sound in his throat. If Dick concentrates, he can hear the sounds of a city in the background of the call. “How are your ribs?”

“Good as new,” Dick says. “How’s your reputation?”

Slade’s laugh is sharp and assured. “Better than ever.”

Dick can’t help but smile. “Good.” He rests his head on the back of the couch, and lets his gaze stray, to the window in the living room filled with sunlight. “I never got the chance to thank you.”

Slade hums. “It’ll come.”

Dick laughs. “So you’re not going to let me off the hook with a Hallmark card?”

“One day I’ll come calling, Grayson,” Slade says. “All I ask is that you answer.”

Dick closes his eyes and thinks of Slade in the forest, his fingers on Dick’s wrist. “I have to ask,” he says, voice a little softer. “Why did you come back for me?”

There’s a long pause. Dick only knows that Slade hasn’t hung up by the sounds of traffic still coming through. At last, Slade replies, measured, “I suppose you were right. I might be a villain, but there are some things I’m better than.”

Dick closes his eyes and grins. “You’re a real character, you know that, Slade Wilson?”

“Take care of yourself, Grayson.”

“You, too.”

Dick takes a moment after he hangs up to allow himself a moment of satisfaction. Then he leaves the phone behind and goes into the kitchen to slip his hands around Jason’s waist. “What’re we having?”

Jason just smiles as he twists around to steal a kiss. “I think you’re going to like it.”

_ Original prompt by [pentapoda](https://pentapoda.tumblr.com/post/159735627077/a-reversebang-style-art-fic-trade-with)  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's all she wrote, folks. this fic never would've happened without the beautiful drawing pentapus (pentapoda on tumblr) prompted to me, so thank you to penta for her bountiful skill and generosity. thank you guys for reading, and please leave a comment, hearing from you gets me to do what i do.
> 
> <3


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